


In Focus

by afterandalasia



Series: Randall/Sulley Series [2]
Category: Monsters Inc (2001), Monsters University (2013)
Genre: Bickering, Community: disney_kink, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends, Engineering, M/M, Monsters, Post-Monsters Inc., Post-Movie(s), Randall-centric, Unintentional Redemption, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:36:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1370785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working for Sullivan, and helping the monster world make its transition from Scream to Laughter energy, was bad enough. Working for Sullivan when he knows full well how good the guy looks... well, that's just embarrassing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Focus

**Author's Note:**

> For the [anon prompt](http://disney-kink.livejournal.com/9516.html?thread=5868332#t5868332) at Disney Kink asking for Randall to put on his glasses, see how sexy Sulley is, and start finding life awkward because of it.
> 
> A/N: Okay, so I'm not sure that this was totally what you were going for, but I ended up with... something? More like a turning point for Randall. It's set post-MI, and sorta falls into the timeline with the other Randall/Sulley stuff I've written.
> 
> The Tarbucks thing is not mine; I read it somewhere on tumblr and just thought it was hilariously appropriate for what you see the coffee-maker produce during MI. So it's kinda headcanon. The idea that Randall did a minor in Engineering is from [here](http://m-u-headcanons.tumblr.com/post/55623642423/), and I just found it kinda awesome.
> 
> Rowan is a completely made-up name for Randall's sibling, i.e. Rex's parent.
> 
> I know nothing about engineering or health insurance forms, but blame any inaccuracies on it being the monster world, not the human one.
> 
> ...That got long. Sorry.

"We need to update your medical records," Sulley announced, dropping a thick form on the table beside him. Randall flinched from the thud it made. "Different job and all. Fancy some time off the designing?"  
  
Scowling, Randall spared only a glance from the dissected scream -- no, _laughter_ now -- can in front of him. He already had a blinding headache, and did not _fancy_ making it worse by having to peer at paperwork. "How about you do the damn paperwork, Sullivan?"  
  
The valves weren't closing fast enough, and escaped laughter was considerably more dangerous than escaped scream. One leaky can could knock out half a Sca- Laughter Floor. Had done, a few weeks ago. Randall picked up one of the valves and examined it closely, holding it just a few inches away from his eyes and turning it over in two hands.  
  
Snarling at people usually worked. Sadly, Sullivan didn't seem to have gotten that message, as he sat down heavily on the seat opposite Randall and stared at him.  
  
Silently.  
  
If he could somehow get a snap-closure rather than a screw one, Randall thought to himself, it might at least ameliorate the leakage problem. But really, Scream cans were just old news. They weren't designed in the right way to hold such large amounts of power. You'd have to practically start over to get the containment.  
  
"Nothing in my job description was about Monster Resources," he finally snapped. He always snapped and broke the silence, and hated himself for doing it. Sullivan took advantage of it too much. "Get one of them to do it.  
  
"Sorry, Randall, these forms have to be done by you," said Sullivan. He drummed his fingers on the table, just once, with a rattle of claws, then stood up. "We need them by the end of the week. Please don't forget." He gave a heavy sigh. "Look, I gotta go, I'm sorry. I just nipped down here during my lunch break, and I've got a meeting with the some University people. Is there anything else that I can do for you?"  
  
"No," Randall said. It didn't quite feel enough, so he added: "Nothing."  
  
"All right, then." It still gave him just the smallest thrill to hear the defeat in Sullivan's voice, despite the twinges of his long-buried conscience. "I'll see you later, Randall."  
  
He wasn't going to dignify that with a response.  
  
  
  
  
  
Working as an equal to Sullivan had been one thing. Working for him -- and there was no way to describe the current situation as anything other than working _for_ Sullivan -- just plain rankled. At least there had been some sense behind competing with him, some reason to try to goad him into snapping back. If he'd known then what Sullivan could be like when he got angry, he might not have wanted to get a reaction. But it was too late for that now.  
  
The judge almost certainly hadn't been aware of how much that part of the deal would hurt. Plead guilty to the assaults and work for Sullivan redesigning the infrastructure of the old Scream-based economy, or face the jury on the full charges. Given that the full charges included endangering the monster world, a crime more harshly punished than murder, Randall had seen the bright side of working for Monsters Inc again.  
  
Some days, though, he thought that he might have been rash to pass up the life imprisonment.

Today was looking to be one of those days. He hadn't set foot in the cafeteria since his... re-hiring, as he tried to make himself think of it. Office or not, that meant a lot of hours looking at the same four walls and out the same window. Considering the window looked out over the car park, even that wasn't particularly helpful.  
  
Frustrating, as well, was that he genuinely missed Scaring. Not just being around people, not just ordering Fungus around. Entering the human world and getting those screams; the _thrill_ of it was something that he hadn't even recognised until it was gone. Without the adrenaline and the head-rush, shifts seemed longer.  
  
And he was lonely. Not that he would admit that to anyone, of course -- not even his damn shrink, another part of the court's ruling. Sitting in one room, with nobody else to drive his own thoughts out of his head, was at best boring and at worst troubling.  
  
Like now. Randall shook himself out of his daze, looking away from the rain-smeared window and back to his paperwork. The word rankled. Paperwork didn't happen to Scarers. But he had been delaying this for long enough, until even Sullivan had been forced to slip out of his permanent niceness and point out that it was required of him to fill in the forms _as part of his job_. Which they both knew was Sullivan's way of trying to nicely say that Randall risked breaching his court order and being jailed if he didn't do as he was told.  
  
Randall peered around the room carefully, though he knew full well that the door was closed, and then reached down for his case. It felt like getting out contraband, the same way he would have imagined he would felt had he ever cheated in an exam. Finally, reluctantly, he drew out the black plastic case within, snapped it open -- and produced his glasses.  
  
They weren't quite like they used to be: the lenses themselves were slimmer, the frames lighter-weight and metal now, without that childishness of wanting the purple plastic to match his scales. He had considered the rimless, but considering how hard it was to find even the silver-framed ones that would probably have been a bad idea.  
  
He slid the glasses back on, and the world snapped back into focus. He always forgot how different it was. He could see the separate pieces of paper on his desk, the lines of water droplets on the window, the panels of the ceiling. Randall felt his eyes relaxing, his cheeks and forehead aching slightly from his usual squint. He reached up to rub over his cheekbone, let his eyes adjust for a moment or two, and then looked back to the form in front of him.  
  
Health insurance.  
  
"Ridiculous," he spat. "Damn Sullivan and his stupid..."  
  
Trailing off into a hiss, Randall snatched up his pen and started to fill in the form. The last time he had needed to do one of these had been when he had first been hired almost twelve years ago now. Since they, it had just been a tick in the box to say that nothing had changed from year to year.  
  
"Name... Randall Boggs... employee number, membership ID... oh, half of this is the same."  
  
His tongue flicked through his teeth in irritation, but he knew as well that the other half would not be. And that would be the problematic half to do.  
  
"Reptilian, one heart, haemoglobic..." he muttered to himself as he made his way down the form and ticked the appropriate boxes. "Next of kin..."  
  
At that, his pen stilled, and Randall had to suppress a sigh. Rowan had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him after everything had exploded out into public knowledge, hissing in his face as she told him that she wanted Rex nowhere near him. Family had made him smile once.  
  
"Better make sure not to get hurt," he muttered to himself, and started to write her information anyway. Since Rowan worked on one of the other Scare... _Laughter_ floors, people would likely run for her should something happen, no matter what it said on the forms.  
  
Still working on the form, he jumped when the door opened and Sullivan entered, already mid-sentence.  
  
"--dropped in at Tarbucks, I remember that you used to like that stu..."

There was a moment as they looked at each other, Sullivan with a Tarbucks tray in one hand and a cylinder tucked under the other arm, Randall still poring over his form. It was a very... _momenty_ moment, and Randall could not put his finger on why, but then he realised that he was actually wearing his glasses and snatched them off his face so quickly that he almost dropped them.  
  
"Damn it, Sullivan, learn to knock," he said. The tip of his tail blended out, invisibility slowly creeping up as his embarrassment grew. Nobody knew that Randall wore glasses and Monsters Inc. Not even Roz, and Roz knew everything.  
  
(Well, perhaps Roz had, considering who she had turned out to be during the trials. But she was an exception.)  
  
"I'll, er, just leave this here," Sullivan replied. Did he sound flustered? Randall pretended to be engrossed in the form still, tapping his pen against the table, as he watched the blurred blue shape of Sullivan move over to the desk, place down a Tarbucks, and retreat again. He closed the door more carefully that time.  
  
Once he was gone, Randall allowed himself to bang his head against the desk. Just this once.  
  
  
  
  
  
It was difficult to say what the most embarrassing aspect of the whole thing. The fact that Sullivan had seen Randall in glasses, the fact that Randall now knew what Sullivan looked like, or the fact that the coffee was indeed a red eye café miel, just as Randall liked it. How the hell had Sullivan even known? On any other day, that would have been the worst part.  
  
But today, he had seen Sullivan. Actually _seen_ the monster, all eight furry muscular mammalian feet of him. And he had just thought those words. He was thinking about what Sullivan's muscles would feel like to wrap around, what his fur would feel like to touch, and how somehow the confidence of adulthood sat better on Sullivan's shoulders than the arrogance of youth.  
  
It had been years. Years since he had first seen Sullivan make his grand entrance into class. Randall felt himself reddening, fronds twitching as he kept his face against the desk. Definitely the most embarrassed he had been in... well, years, certainly.  
  
Because Sullivan was attractive. Outrageously so. Randall could remember what it had been like to see Sullivan then, young and cocky and easily the hottest monster on the Scaring course, but more starkly he could see in his mind's eye the monster that Sullivan had instead become. Self-assured and self-aware, which somehow just made him...  
  
Sexier.  
  
There. That was the word that Randall had been trying to ignore. Sullivan was sexy, and now Randall was aware of it.  
  
Finally straightening up, Randall shoved his glasses back on and reached for his coffee. The sooner he got this damned form finished, and could take his glasses off again, the better.  
  
  
  
  
  
Unfortunately, Sullivan did not give him enough time to really regain his composure before returning. It was only a couple of hours later -- by which point Randall was working on compression ratios, scrawling messy notes down one side of the permanently-covered whiteboard -- when Sullivan returned.  
  
At least this time he knocked. That would have been a clue as to who it was even if Randall's circle of acquaintances wasn't significantly smaller nowadays. There were probably only a handful of monsters who came to this office, and Sullivan was the only one who did so every day. Randall wasn't sure whether that was part of the court ruling or not.  
  
"Randall?"  
  
He didn't look round as the door opened and Sullivan, speaking tentatively, stepped through. Frankly, he was trying not to cringe.  
  
"I, er," Sullivan coughed. "Forgot to leave this here earlier."  
  
He set something down with a clang, and Randall finally turned to see the bright yellow can that Sullivan had been carrying.  
  
"Professor Rompleston from the University asked me to pass along her regards. She said that she was looking forward to working with you, if it can be arranged."  
  
"Haven't heard that name in a while," Randall muttered. Staying up on his hind legs, he crossed over to the can and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. The new sensitive guage was in place -- that was good. Old valve system, though, so he needed to get that prepared for the next generation. Sullivan made a vague noise.  
  
"She was doing Masters while I was a sophomore."  
  
"Huh. I didn't want to ask," said Sullivan. Randall glanced up warily to where the taller monster was standing by the desk, looking -- to judge by his shifting weight -- distinctly uncomfortable. Apparently it was one thing to work with a felon, but quite another to see him wearing _glasses_. "She was nice about you."  
  
This time, it was Randall's turn to make a non-committal noise. He snapped open the can and set about unscrewing the top to look inside. He'd always been suspicious of some of the cans, especially the older ones which got used on the lower-output Scare Floors. It was about time that Monsters Inc invested in some new hardware.  
  
"If you'd come to the next meeting with the Engineering Department, I'd really appreciate it," Sulley blurted. He hesitated for a moment, then added quickly: "If you want to. I don't understand a lot of what they're talking about. You'd be better at that than I am."  
  
Less than a year ago, they had fought. Not argued -- literally, physically fought, tried to kill each other. It felt strange and distant, and painful, as Randall squinted and Sulley shifted from being blurry to slightly less blurry. Randall still couldn't quite make out his expression.  
  
"It'd be good to finally get out of here," said Randall sourly. He hadn't meant for it to come out quite so acerbic, and he felt uncomfortable as Sullivan winced. He carefully put the can down again, turning the top back and forth in two of his hands, and forced himself not to fidget with the others. "And you could probably do with someone who knows what they're talking about."  
  
"I'd appreciate that," said Sullivan, and damn it all if he wasn't still being so _sincere_. That had probably been the worst part of dealing with him, the fact that Randall suspected he had been sincere in everything that he said. Not like plenty of the other monsters that Randall had dealt with over the years. "I'll, ah, get going then. Gotta do-- CEO stuff."  
  
"Sure." Randall had to step aside to let Sullivan leave, and drew back a little further than was really necessary to make sure that they didn't brush against each other along the way.  
  
As the door closed, he resisted the urge to throw something across the room. But only just.  
  
  
  
  
  
He didn't sleep well. That was pretty much a given to be honest; Randall hadn't slept well in a long time, and had gotten used to it years ago. It had helped when it had come to building the scream extractor, anyway.  
  
As usual, he got to work early, but cursed at the sight of the coffee waiting on his desk. A close look at the side told him that yes, it was once again how he liked it, and he slammed it down again so hard that a small splash escaped and landed, almost scalding on his hand.  
  
"Damn it, Sullivan," he hissed.  
  
It would be easier if Sullivan was a lying bastard. A cheat, to go with however he had managed to become a Scarer after getting kicked out of the course for his never-detailed "dangerous" behaviour. And it had been easier to think that when he hadn't know what Sullivan looked like, hadn't seen the honesty written across his face. It hadn't been lies and good acting. Sullivan... actually gave a damn about things.  
  
Gave a damn. That was a new one. Or an old one, perhaps, so old that Randall had put aside thoughts of anyone else watching out for him. It had been easier watching out for himself instead. But having someone watch out for you invited you to watch out for them in return, and that... that was out of the question.  
  
  
  
  
  
Nothing seemed to get done that day, no matter how much he fought with equations or fiddled with clamps and valves to try to get something that could completely prevent uncontrolled output while coping with, well, uncontrolled input instead. There was a satisfaction to getting that sort of thing balanced, but that didn't help in the slightest when it was impossible to get his brain to focus for long enough.  
  
Some time after lunch -- he had eaten thoughtlessly, watching the colours of vehicles coming and going in the car park beyond the window -- there was another knock at the door.  
  
Randall ignored it.

Another knock, this one slightly louder, followed, and then the door creaked open anyway. Randall rolled his eyes, but did not turn around until Sullivan cleared his throat.  
  
"Randall. Can I have a word?"  
  
"Considering you're CEO, I'd imagine you can do whatever you want." He forced anger into the words, even as it didn't quite want to fit. He screwed up the paper bag that had held his lunch and tossed it in the direction of the trash can.  
  
But Sullivan wasn't acting like a CEO, Randall had to admit. Not even his version of it, which involved a lot more friendliness and interest in things than Waternoose had ever managed to summon, and a lot fewer despairing sighs. "I just wanted to say..." Sullivan took a deep breath, then dropped out a single word like a weight: "Sorry."  
  
"Sorry?" Of all of the things that Sullivan could have said, that took him completely by surprise. Randall's head snapped up to the taller monster's face, fronds flicking upwards.  
  
"For... well, for everything." Still that sincere tone, soaking every word. Randall was speechless as Sullivan pressed on. "For being such an ass in college, and then for never making it up, and... for everything that happened with Waternoose. With Boo. I know--"  
  
"Stop, stop." Randall waved sharply, closing his eyes and just trying to make the right space in his head for the words. _Sullivan_ was apologizing? Sure, Randall had hated the guy, but that was because he was so successful, because he'd had everything, not for anything in particular that he had done. College was college. Sullivan somehow becoming top Scarer _despite_ college, that was what had hurt. Sullivan being popular and sociable and somehow gaining Mike's redirected confidence.  
  
He heard Sullivan go to say something else, and waved again before holding up one finger for a moment's pause. He snapped open his case, retrieved his glasses, and slipped them back on again. The world refined itself into focus.  
  
"Say it again."  
  
"I'm... I'm sorry?" Randall could see the expression go to with the words now. Confusion, and a little bit of desperation, but above all that honesty. "For the illegal banishment most of all, I mean, I of all people should have known--"  
  
"You mean it."  
  
Sullivan blinked for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, yeah."  
  
Slowly, Randall reached up and removed his glasses once again. It felt strange to wear them nowadays, even when he was by himself. They pinched the sides of his head.  
  
"You... actually mean that."  
  
Not, _sorry_ , Randall, but we're going to have to ask you to leave the Roars. Not, _sorry_ , Randall, I don't think working on your station is going to work out. Not, _sorry_ , Randall, looks like you're second place again this year.  
  
"Thanks," he said. It came out not just quietly, but softly. Sulley nodded, and went as if he was going to leave without even waiting for anything more, and Randall hurried to stand between him and the door. "And... I'm sorry, too."  
  
Sullivan paused for a moment, then patted him on the arm. The leather of his paw was warm against Randall's skin. "Thanks, Randall. I really appreciate that." The door swung softly to behind him, and Randall rubbed his eyes tiredly. And it wasn't even lunchtime.  
  
"I'm going soft," he muttered to himself, and slammed the door for good measure. Just because he'd meant the apology didn't mean that he fancied repeating it any time soon. He just wasn't sure yet whether he minded the change.


End file.
